Yesterday was what I called the day of bad driving. It was also the day of good eating but I’ll get to that in a minute or so.
We had visited the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond. Out interest was specifically the exhibit on Pompeii but the price of admission to that included general admission of the museum. As I retired scientist that interested me and maybe I’ll have another post on that in a day or two. But for now I’ll just say we had spent the night in Richmond and so were at the museum when doors opened and left in late morning. I could have stayed longer but we figured we had a 5 hour drive in front of us. We live in southeastern PA.
It started well. We were making good time as we headed up I-95. Then we hit a back-up near Fredricksburg which looked like it would go on for miles. (Thanks to Google maps for that.) So we decided to stop for lunch. Since traffic on !-95 didn’t look any better when we were ready to get back on the road, we decided to hit Route 1 for a bit. There was lots of traffic but at least it was moving.
When Google told us we were past the back-up we cut back over to I-95. After a few more miles we hit more traffic. It seemed the interstate was just filled with bad drivers that day since there were multiple accidents ahead causing more problems. So we headed back over to Route 1 and decided to drive on it until the Washington beltway.
After a few more miles on beltway we hit another back-up. I think it was due to another accident and we headed over to Route 301 with the intention of by-passing the Washington area and heading toward Baltimore. But before we left 301 to head toward Baltimore, Google maps showed that both tunnels through Baltimore were backed-up and we decided to take a longer route staying on 301 past Annapolis and through the eastern shore of Maryland.
I wondered about the relative importance of volume and bad driving in these traffic problems.
Of course there was a back-up going over Bay Bridge but it was nowhere as bad as those we had seen earlier. By then we had done 6 hours of our 5 hour trip and were still at least 2 hours from home. We decided on an early dinner on Kent Island.
Kent Island is the eastern shore end of the Bay Bridge, across the bay from Annapolis We had been there several times before as it is a beautiful and relaxing place with a number of very good restaurants.
We decided on The Narrows. It is our favorite restaurant in the area and we had eaten there at least 3 times before. Each meal was great and as is the view over the water.
By the way, the picture in not the view from The Narrows. It was taken on a previous visit to the island. I think it is a view from Chesapeake Heritage & Visitor Center on Kent Island.
It was early so we opted for a lighter dinner. The special (halibut) sounded enticing but sounded like a bit more that I wanted then. I chose the Parmesan-encrusted salmon and it was delicious. My wife had the salmon salad which was also very good.
After a pleasant stop at the The Narrows, we were back on the road and home in a bit over 2 hours. We had not planned on coming home that way but the bad driving and traffic on I-95 made us change our plan and led us to a very good meal at The Narrows.
In this case, something good came out of a bad traffic experience.